


Another Maiden's Day

by Zeta_Mei



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: About traditions that can't be broken, Basically it's about a couch and a Christmas tree, Fuck Covid 19, Modern AU, Pandemics, Returning Home, Soft Jaime Lannister, Tired Brienne of Tarth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27838417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeta_Mei/pseuds/Zeta_Mei
Summary: Nurse Brienne wanders through a KL square that resembles a bit too much to Piazza di Spagna, then finally comes back home - the flat she shares with a certain Jaime.This is my contribution for the Jaime&Brienne Christmas Calendar, Day 8.To be honest, I had no intention to write a "2020" fic, it simply happened and for a nice reason.Contrary to what has been announced by media, at dawn, in a rainy sleeping Rome, the statue of the Virgin in Piazza di Spagna got her floral wreaths, one of which has been placed on her outstretched arms at 40 feet high by firefighters, who were singing in chorus "Fuck Covid19" (at least according to a friend of mine who is a reliable like books!Jaime).Hope you enjoy, let me know if you like it or not, and which chocolate you prefer.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister & Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 18
Kudos: 51





	Another Maiden's Day

Her heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains her senses, as if she had drunk a cup of hemlock. Armored in a blue parka, Brienne steadies her steps, hurrying towards the Underground, a last, dolent glimpse to the tall column in white Tarth marble where the Maiden stands, bearing an immaculate cloak and people's troubles, her cupric eyes staring at the moonless sky.

Humidity damps the flowers in her lap and her snowy cheeks, forming tears that only Brienne can see, because the square is empty. 

Still beautiful, but desolately beautiful.

The fountains sing and sputter, fighting strenuously the impeding dusk along with the Sevenmas lights, the air lingers dull, static, lacking the gluttonous smell of hot roast chestnuts, the muffled giggles of teen girls walking hand in hand, the thrilled sounds made by brats crowding around caricaturists and street artists.

It sounds all fake like a tin dragon. A thing of beauty is a joy for ever, they had taught her, so beauty is nothing but a fake coin without people to enjoy it and there's actually nobody walking on the streets, except the few ones who work even on the Maiden's Day - like Brienne, her steps echoing in the wide, hitting hard against the shattered window of the bedroom where a foreign, a poet, writ his name in water and passed by, too soon.

Sore, after the umpteenth endless shift at the hospital, Briennes's glad to wear practical shoes on the treacherous cobblestones, glad that nobody is seeing her toddling among the puddles like a too grown child.

She can be such a dumb, sometimes, like her flatmate often rubs in her face, putting on display his perfect teeth of mother-of-pearl in one of his famous grin. She's late, terribly late and exausthed, but she had to see, with her own eyes, that the media were wrong, that the pandemic hadn't broken another tradition, not this time. She grins and almost stumbles in a man in uniform. 

Fuck, the mask, glued to her nose by the snot, doesn't hide the shame of her puffy, tired eyes, but the man is mild-tempered, making her lose no more than a handful of minutes. Still wrapped in embarrassment, after the quick document control she flees the desert of statues and cobblestones, and literally jumps down the last steps to the Underground, counting every stop, until it's her turn to climb down.

Finally.

Home is waiting for her.

Well, "home" may be a word too big for the two rooms apartment she shares with Jaime, but she has been missing it absurdly all the same. She has been missing Jaime, too, in a way... Brienne shouldn't miss him that way, however, it feels like a betrayal now that they've set aside their never-ending quarrels and become almost friends.

Friends... sharing a few warmed meals, cuddling from time to time on the sofa... but only because they're both so fucking touch-starved - who's not touch-starved nowadays? They're friend, simply friends, that's plain, Brienne should be glad about it, and if she isn't, it's because her head is thick and she has seen Shrek too many times.

A couple of times even with Jaime, on their old couch, her fingers playing with the golden hair curling on his nape.

She bites her lip, as she sees that the miny-market is already closed, of course it is, it's too late, but probably Jaime has recalled to buy the milk, he always does the grocery shopping and all the stuff, lately... He has grown kind, almost soft, with Brienne, week after week, being now quite unrecognizable from the asshole he was when she inherited Galladon's place in the tiny, dysfunctional, but incredibly cheap flat in Eel Alley, on the fashioned and exaggeratedly costly Visenya's Hill.

The owner of the place must be a very generous or a very distracted man, anyway, not to increase the rent - once, in occasion of the Crone's day, she had proposed to send him a greeting card, but Jaime simply laughed and stared at her as if she were a flying donkey, arguing something about the fact the owner was kind of a far relative of his and that he had no intention of wasting his precious time for one of the wench's foolish ideas.

An ambulance cuts her road, the sudden beat of some ghastly machines she has learned to use overlaps the loud siren in her mind, and she grinds forward, the sense of suffocation grasping her throat gradually dissipates when she spies the silhouette of the crimson building that hosts the postal office, and, immediately next to it, the impressive portal of sandstone, with the inner yard invaded by spiderwebs and by big vases of bony lemon trees, and, at the fourth floor with no lift, the old door... that opens before she can reach out the keys, showing dark malachite eyes.

“Hey, wench", he says in a breath, his curls oddly in desarray, "I heard you coming and...”

“Of course, I'm an elephant, as usual”, she pants, eyes low, hoping Jaime not to notice anything strange in them. “Sorry I've bothered you, now can I pass?”

“There are no freckled elephants, I fear, but it's not what I was saying”, he protests, but, at least, he makes room enough to allow her sneak into the narrow corridor, turn around the drying rack where her panties are hanging - freakishly larger than his boxer pants, but she doesn't really need to know who told him to make also _her_ laundry - and point right to the bathroom.

In her haste, she forgets to close the door, so he leans, legs crossed, against the wooden jamb while she washes her hands, getting rid of the mask to sooth her cheeks and her eyelids with pleasantly cool water.

“Brienne.” She can see him in the rectangle of the mirror, she can read tension in the way his arms lace tightly on his sculpted torso. “I expected you to come back in the morning. You should have sent a message.”

Her jaw clenches automatically and she struggles to relax it again, battling against that part of her who'd like to jump at his throat only because she's upset and tired and he has no right to demand a message when she has had hardly the time to piss in the last twenty-four hours. “Sorry”, she settles to say, in the end, burying her face in a clean, good-smelling towel. “I haven't even heard my family.”

“I know, wench. He called me.”

“Who? Galladon?”

“No, Selwyn, with Alyssa. Just a couple of times.”

“Selwyn?” Brienne sits on the edge of the tub, incredulous. She can't decide if she's more shocked by the fact her father has phoned Jaime or by the fact Jaime has called her parents by their first name.

“He calls me almost every day, but don't worry, wench, I'm not planning to be adopted by that oaf of your father even if your mother is very, very sweet,” Jaime smirks. “You're almost unbearable as a flatmate, don't need you to become my little giant sister.”

The towel ends at his feet - weak shot. She scowls at him with all the forces she still has, when he gallantly picks it up from the tiled floor and sits at her side, annoyingly sniffing at her. She should oblige him to keep the safety distance, but it's a lost cause, it has always been a lost cause, and not only for Jaime's fault. 

“Now, listen to me, wench”, he says, half merry, half serious, toying with the wipe in his long fingers. “Go call your parents, while I prepare you a good bath with the salts Arianne gifted you a century ago. Just don't go into the lounge, ok?”

“It was Alysanne, not Arianne. Why shouldn't I go to the kitchen?”, she replies, puzzled and a bit polemical. The fact they got to wedge in it a bookshelf and a couch doesn't turn the kitchen into a true living room.

“I like when you're curious, wench.” Jaime urges her to get back on her feet, leading her to her chamber. A wave of heat waved up her neck when she notices he has tidied up even there, the brazen man. “Better curious and caustic, than sad”, he concludes, leaving a small, unexpected kiss on the back of Brienne's head before closing the door on her shock.

In the end, she opts for the white, fluffy sweater that makes her look like a pumped up snowman and she puts it over the flannel pajamas, because it's soft and she needs softness and doesn't mind about Jaime's witty comments - no more, at least. She's even got used to his abuse of silly archaics, by now.

A nice smell of food welcomes Brienne in the corridor and her mouth waters - when has been the last time she has eaten something truly cooked? She goes on tiptoes, like a starving pup of seven feet, but no matter how hard she applies herself, she never gets to be cat-pawed like Jaime and he surprises her half-way, blocking the entrance to the kitchen, holding a wooden spoon like a knight would hold a sword.

“Lentils?”, she suggests, pretending not to see how he's gorgeous in a cachemire pullover and a stained apron.

“Lentils”, the improvised cook confirms, with a cocky grin. “But it's not what I wanted to show you, wench.”

She passes the fatidic treshold, with thin expectations, but the lights turn on and turn off rhythmically, their Sevenmas tree being small, a concentrate of Lannister vanity and KL's kitsch, green and gold and ruby and bright like Jaime's eyes – perfect, in a word. She can't help but smile with all her crooked teeth when he hands her a blue, glittered star in pure fake porcelain of Yi-Ti.

“I thought you might have been too tired, Brienne, to make the tree with me”, he explains, his grin not so cocky now, “but I left the tree topper for you, putting obviously all my hopes in the fact you should be well aware of what normal people do with a tree topper....”

Brienne snorts, reaching the tree to complete it with the glimmering star, and making a step backward to admire the final result.

Now it's even more perfect, if that's possible.

“Good, wench. I was beginning to feel concerned for the poor, innocent topper”, Jaime mocks her, getting rids of the apron, unaware of the fact that the pulsing lights are igniting sparkles in his golden curls, “now let's sit at the table so we can feast with the banquet I've been preparing for hours.”

The banquet is just sausages cooked in a lentil soup with a bit of burnt aftertaste, but Brienne empties her plate, and asks for a second one before Jaime has finished his. Of course, she's faster than him, being Jaime too busy in talking and talking without pose. Not that bothers her, on the contrary. It's like music, a noisy, sometimes annoying, babbling, but nice, melodious as a nightingale, for her ears after such a tiring day.

He keeps talking even when they move to the worn couch with a mug of hot chocolate and cream for dessert, his voice cradling Brienne till she surrenders and let herself crumble in his lap, allowing him to drum the rhythm of their fav series' theme song on her bicep without even I complaining, for once.

“I warn you, wench, I'm not going to ruin my spine by carrying you to your bed like I did a week ago,” he teases her, tugging at the collar of her thick sweater, but her eyes are inexorably closed, weariness flooding in her veins.

“Then let me sleep on the couch”, she replies, in a drowsy murmur. If possible, Jaime's light touch eases simply her sink in a sweet void, but she has to tell him something, before yielding completely to sleep. “However, thanks, Jaime.”

“For what?”

“The dinner, the laundry, the tree. The tree, most of all.”

She suffocates a growl as Jaime shifts nervously under her straw locks. “I did nothing special, Brienne. It's the Maiden's Day, notwithstanding all, and people make the tree on the Maiden's day.”

“We never had a Sevenmas tree in Eel Street”, she says, adjusting the weight of her shoulders on the couch cushions, to avoid blocking blood circulation in Jaime's thigh.

“This year is different, yet, and since we're not going home for Sevenmas holidays...”

“You're not going to the Rock?”, she lifts her chin, struggling to open her eyes.

“That's what I just said.” His hand starts messing with her hair, as he usually does when he's upset with the show writers' decisions. “Glad you're not deaf, wench.”

Brienne's heart skips a beat, as she notices a subtle, almost inexistent, creak in his voice. “My parents asked you to stay”, she replies, because there must be a reason, a rational one. There's always a rational reason.

“They did, and Galladon, too,” he agrees, quietly, a soft smile curving his lips. “But it's not why I chose to stay, and you should know why I wouldn't spent the Evenmas anywhere else, nor with anyone else, Brienne. And you should text me, when the day turns rough and you can't come back home but late.” She opens her mouth, and closes it, words being too important to let them go when she's that exhausted, ugly, scared and confused. “Ssh, Brienne, don't say a word, not tonight”, he adds, his glance gentle like the hand that is now stroking her nape in small rings of fire. “Tomorrow, we'll talk about it tomorrow, when you'll be well rested, the daylight dusting finally away the spiderwebs covering those big, blue headlamps of yours.”

She nods, closing her eyelids when her cheek kisses the smooth wool of his costly pullover, listening to the lullaby of his heartbeat muddled to the screams from the tv screen, but she can't sleep, not immediately.

As Jaime's hand travels on her back to pull her closer to him, she mourns the day that has glided by so soon, like the passage of the Maiden's tears falling silently through the clear air, she mourns the days she has wasted so stubbornly because of her insecurities, she mourns the poets and the ones who passed by in a lonely bed and not in their love's embrace, until she finds herself hoping, only hoping, for the recovering ones, for all the living ones, and finally she loses the track of her thoughts, the sense of time, pillowed upon Jaime's chest, feeling it fall and swell, fall and swell, at the nuanced rhythm of the lights on their Sevenmas tree.

**Author's Note:**

> The poet mentioned by Brienne is Keats! The starting line and the ending one are practically quotes from his works, I left some other easter eggs ❄ Have a nice December!


End file.
